Chicken Tinga

Chicken Tinga is a Mexican shredded chicken recipe prepared with peppers, tomatoes, and onion and served in corn tortillas.

This Chicken Tinga dish is the perfect Mexican Recipe to serve with tortillas and all your favorite sides. For more Mexican chicken dishes, try the recipes for One Pot Mexican Chicken and Rice or Slow Cooker Chicken Carnitas.

Mexican Chicken Tinga is a traditional recipe with incredible flavor. The shredded chicken is fairly simple, but you’ll prepare it with Tinga sauce that makes it spicy and wonderfully flavorful. Traditional Tinga sauce is easy to make with sautéed onions, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, and tomatoes.

Rich adobo sauce and chipotle peppers give the chicken an earthy and spicy flavor that people absolutely love. Then the tomatoes add a more tangy taste to finish the flavorful red sauce. Serve the sauce-coated chicken in corn tortillas. The Chicken Tinga Taco is spicy and flavorful but not so hot that the whole family can’t enjoy this traditional meal.

To make these chicken tacos into a complete meal, be sure to serve them with your favorite sides and choice of toppings. Making Tinga tacos with rice either on the side or in the tacos is easy and delicious. You can use yellow rice, White Rice, Brown Rice, or cauliflower rice, depending on your preference. To give the rice dish a more delicious flavor, cook it in the leftover water after cooking the chicken. The liquid left is similar to chicken broth after cooking the meat, so it will infuse the rice with a savory chicken flavor.

How to Make Chicken Tinga

Simmer Chicken: Add the chicken meat, water, salt, cumin, black pepper, and 1 cup of diced onions to a large dutch oven. Bring the water to a simmer. Then lower heat to medium-low and keep the pot covered for 1 hour. After the cooking time, remove the meat. Shred chicken and discard the skin and bones. Instead of dumping the water, you can keep it to make rice to go with the Chicken Tinga.
Tomato Mixture: Dry out your dutch oven or use a clean pot. Add vegetable oil and place the soup pot over medium heat. Then add the remaining onions and cook until they’re translucent about 6-8 minutes. Then add the canned tomatoes, chipotles in adobo sauce, chicken base, salt, cumin, and black pepper to a high-speed blender. Puree the sauce ingredients well. Add the sauce mixture to the pot with the caramelized onions.
Finish: Add the shredded chicken to the pot. Stir well to combine the chicken with the delicious tomato sauce ingredients. Then bring to a simmer. Serve over corn tortillas with fresh cilantro, lime wedges, and any other taco toppings that you’d like.

Delicious Mexican Sides

FAQs

What to serve with Tinga?

The obvious answer is to serve this chicken with corn tortillas, but you can also add crowd-pleasing side dish options to complete the entire meal. Cilantro lime rice, Corn Salad, chips, Black Bean Dip, and salsa, or any other classic Mexican sides would taste amazing with this traditional Chicken Tinga recipe.

Where does Tinga come from?

Tinga Chicken is a Mexican dish enjoyed throughout Central America now. It is likely originally Pueblan.

Can I make Chicken Tinga ahead of time?

Yes, this is a great recipe for meal prep. It is recommended to cook the chicken a day or two in advance. You can also prepare the sauce and store the cooked chicken and sauce in a separate container. For the day of prep time, simply add the chicken to the sauce and bring it to a simmer. Then serve the recipe with tortillas and enjoy.

Chicken Tinga collage

Key Ingredients

Chicken: For this classic chicken recipe, use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. After cooking, you shred the chicken and discard the bones and skin. However, it is still best to cook it with bone-in meat because it infuses the chicken with extra flavor and keeps the inside from drying out during the slow cook time. You can also use chicken breasts for this recipe. They’re slightly lower in fat, which makes it easier for them to dry out, especially if you use boneless chicken breasts. To prevent the meat from drying out, you can marinate it before the cooking time
Onion: Divide the onion into 2 portions. One part is to cook with the chicken, and the other to caramelize and add to the delicious tomato and adobo sauce recipe.
Chipotle peppers: Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce add a lot of amazing flavor to this chicken recipe. Chipotle peppers are jalapenos, which have been smoke-dried and preserved in the sauce. This ingredient adds a distinct spicy and smoky flavor to the recipe.
Tomatoes: Canned tomatoes may be one of the most important ingredients. The peppers, sauce, and spices all have a bold, warm, and slightly spiced flavor. Fresh, tangy tomatoes balance that out for a more nuanced and layered taste.
Seasonings: Speaking of the spices, you’ll flavor this dish with a combination of minced garlic cloves, kosher salt, a dash of cumin, and black pepper.

Variations

Vegetable Additions: You can add your favorite vegetables to the tomato and pepper sauce. Try adding red and green bell peppers, squash, cauliflower, and zucchini. You could also use different kinds of onions like white onion or red onion. Chopped green onion also makes a good topping for the recipe.
Cheese: Feel free to top off the finished dish with your favorite types of cheese. You can use a Mexican cheese blend, Mexican crema, cheddar, Pepper Jack, fresh goat cheese, or any other preference you have.
Extra Spicy Tigna Chicken: If you have a high heat tolerance, then you can make this recipe with an extra kick of heat. Chipotle peppers already add quite a lot of spice to the chicken. But, you can always add to that by using more peppers or adding cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes.
Pork Tinga: Instead of making this recipe with chicken, you can prepare it with pork shoulder. To ensure that the pork is done, check that the internal temperature has reached 145 degrees F. You can prep the vegetable and sauce ingredients the same as the original Tinga recipe.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tinga

Prep Chicken: To make this recipe in the slow cooker, start by seasoning the chicken with salt and pepper. Then add it to a large slow cooker.
Cook Onions: Add oil to a skillet and cook the diced onions.
Blend Sauce: Then add the tomatoes, peppers and adobo sauce, and chicken base to the high-speed blender. Then blend into a puree.
Combine: Add the onions, tomato sauce, and seasoning to the slow cooker over the chicken.
Cook: Cover the pot and set the slow cooker time to 6-8 hours on low setting or 4 hours on high.
Serve: After the cook time, shred the chicken and serve in corn tortillas with your desired fresh toppings and sides.

Serving Ideas

When you serve Chicken Tinga, add the shredded chicken to corn tortillas. Try toasting the tortillas first for warm and slightly crispy corn tortillas. Then add fresh cilantro, lime wedges, and fresh lime juice. You can also add any other classic Mexican toppings like cheese, shredded lettuce, salsa, avocado mash, or guacamole.

Instead of serving the chicken in a taco, you could also make this recipe into a delicious taco salad. Just serve the shredded chicken over corn chips. Then add toppings like black beans, melty cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, and salsa.

Mexican Dishes

How to Store

Serve: Don’t leave Mexican Chicken Tinga out at room temperature for more than 2 hours.
Store: To keep leftovers, let the chicken cool down. Then transfer the recipe to an airtight container to store in the fridge. It can stay good in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.
Freeze: For a longer storage option, you keep frozen Chicken Tinga for up to 4 months.